It is well known in the art to dispense folded sheet products such as paper napkins from a stack of such products, and numerous devices and mechanisms for accomplishing same have been developed. Perhaps the simplest of such dispensers are those which retain a stack of such products in a vertical or near vertical orientation and rely upon the force of gravity to maintain the stack at a dispenser opening through which the products are manually withdrawn one at a time by consumers.
While gravity-fed dispensers are generally characterized by their simplicity and low cost, they also have a drawback. It will be appreciated that as a stack of paper napkins or the like is depleted during dispensing, the weight of the stack within the dispenser housing becomes less and less. In the case of gravity-fed dispensers which are manually accessed through an opening at the bottom thereof this reduction of stack weight can cause difficulties. When accessing a paper napkin to manually grasp and cause the dispensing of same a user often exerts an upward force against the lowermost napkin in the stack. When the stack itself is relatively short it can be dislodged by such activity to a position away from the dispenser opening. For example, the napkins or other folded sheet products in the stack can tip on edge and rest against a wall of the dispenser housing at a location not freely manually accessible. This can cause consumer frustration and result in more frequent servicing of the dispenser than would otherwise be required.